Some of the irreversible diseases do not even have a known cause and once inflicted, it can be a great challenge to adjust to the conditions and symptoms that are associated with them. One of such diseases is Alzheimer’s. There is a silver lining being created by researchers and scientists when it comes to knowing the cause of the disease. The research is published in the journal Plos Biology.
The cause of the disease is linked back to a chemical leakage that occurs in the brain. “While we previously knew that the hallmark feature of people living with Alzheimer’s disease was the progressive accumulation of toxic protein deposits within the brain called beta-amyloid, researchers did not know where the amyloid originated from, or why it deposited in the brain,” said John Mamo, a researcher from Curtin University and lead author of the study, in a press release.
It was discovered that people who have Alzheimer’s have a compound called beta-amyloid. This is linked with the beginning of dementia. It is created outside of the brain and becomes part of the bloodstream through lipoproteins. These lipoproteins can leak, and this is where the chances of insertion of toxic compounds into the brain are created.
This link was proven when experimented with the mice. “This ‘blood-to-brain pathway’ is significant because if we can manage the levels in the blood of lipoprotein-amyloid and prevent their leakage into the brain, this opens up potential new treatments to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and slow memory loss,” said Mamo in the release.
It will still take some time to prove the cause with full confirmation in humans. In June, a study described how bouncing ultrasound waves inside the human skull will help boost the treatment of Alzheimer’s. “The general sentiments [surrounding the new drug, Aduhelm, developed by Biogen] are that this will boost the Alzheimer’s therapeutic space,” wrote Professor Jürgen Götz, who works with the Queensland Brain Institute and authored the study about ultrasound waves, in an email to IE. “Whether the drug shows clinical efficacy needs to be proven and the company has many years to do so.”
If this drug is matched with the confirmed known cause for the disease, Alzheimer’s may have a chance of becoming reversible.